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U.S. drops plan to collect car tag data

FILE - In this July 16, 2013 file photo, Alexandria, Va. Police Office Dennis Vafier uses a laptop in his squad car to scan vehicle license plates during his patrol of the area. The Homeland Security Department is proposing that a private company give it access to a nationwide database of license plate tracking information, according to a federal contract proposal. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais, File)

WASHINGTON — The Homeland Security Department abruptly reversed course Wednesday and dropped plans to ask a private company to give the government access to a nationwide database of license plate tracking information.

Secretary Jeh Johnson directed that a contract proposal issued last week be canceled.

The proposal said Immigration and Customs Enforcement was planning to use the license plate data in pursuit of criminal immigrants and others sought by authorities.

Gillian Christensen, an ICE spokeswoman, said the contract solicitation was posted “without the awareness of ICE leadership.”

“While we continue to support a range of technologies to help meet our law enforcement mission, this solicitation will be reviewed to ensure the path forward appropriately meets our operational needs,” Christensen said.

The department said Johnson has ordered a review of the proposal.

The contract notice came amid growing concerns about government surveillance of U.S. citizens but didn’t address potential privacy consequences.

Before the notice was canceled, Christensen said the database “could only be accessed in conjunction with ongoing criminal investigations or to locate wanted individuals.”

According to the contract proposal, the government wanted “a close-up of the plate and a zoomed out image of the vehicle.”

The Homeland Security Department also wanted instant and around-the-clock access to the records and is asking for whoever wins the contract to make the information available through a smartphone app. It is not clear from the contract notice how long individual records would be kept or what other government agencies may have access to the trove of records.

Jennifer Lynch, a senior staff attorney with the San Francisco-based civil liberties group Electronic Frontier Foundation, said those unknowns represented serious privacy concerns.

“The base level concern is that license plate data is location data, and location data is very revealing,” Lynch said. “It can tell you a lot about a person’s life: where they go, who they associate with, what kind of religion they practice, what doctors they visit.”

Catherine Crump, an ACLU lawyer, said Wednesday she was pleased to hear that the department has canceled the contract proposal but still worried about that it might be brought back to life at some point.

“While we are heartened that it looks as though the plan is off the table for now; it is still unexplained why the proposal was put forward and why it has been withdrawn,” Crump said.

The government’s contract proposal was published amid revelations of surveillance programs run by the National Security Agency. Privacy advocates have argued that NSA phone data collection programs and other surveillance programs are gobbling up massive amounts of information about U.S. citizens who have no ties to criminals or terrorists, which the government has said the programs are designed to target.

Classified NSA documents, leaked to news organizations, showed the NSA was collecting telephone records, emails and video chats of millions of Americans who were not suspected of a crime.